Tyl Regor (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
biochemastery) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
maskormenacelogs2019-09-11 09:24 am
biochemastery) wrote in maskormenacelogs2019-09-11 09:24 am
What's this? What's this?!
WHO: Tyl Regor and YOU!
WHERE: Heropa, various Porter cities
WHEN: Immediately after Tyl's port-in
WHAT: Tyl tries to attack Porter base staff, gets sedated, then muddles his way through having a human body, his new powers, eating a food, and low doorways.
WARNINGS: None yet. Probable spoilers for Natah, once he gets talking to people.
[ooc: Tyl is a verbose lunatic, so for those coming in on a direct link to this page, I've provided some in-page navigation links here so y'all can jump around to find your fancy:
A. Heropa: Out on the street
B. Still Heropa: Testing out a new power
C. Any Porter city: Food is complicated
D. Outside Jeopardy 001: Ow.]
Introduction: Alien abduction!!
Ow. Owowow ow ow. Light. Light outside his eyelids was making a very spirited attempt to get in. No. Go away. He had a hangover. He had the worst hangover. The kind where you couldn't remember the party, but you had the vague suspicion that it hadn't been fun.
A shadow passed between him and the light, and dared to open his eyes just a little. He saw a fuzzy blob.
Well, that was helpful. It mumbled at him, and he gave it a suspicious squint.
"Ooeryoo," he demanded, and then frowned in annoyance. That hadn't come out right. Had it? Hadn't. Was he still drunk? High on something he'd made in the lab?
"Jusgenyoo chektofer," the blurr said, and that sounded wrong too. Ears weren't 'earing right, along with everything else. He felt far too tired to function.
Sedated. He was definitely sedated. More than usual. Couldn't entirely blame them, not after the last time he'd needed emergency care.
No, wait, he could blame them, because he was in charge, and he didn't want to be sedated right now.
"mdun," he said, trying to pick himself up, but that failed with a wave of dizziness as soon as he tried to lift his head. Whoof. Wasn't gonna stop him arguing the point, though. "Gemeeup, god wurg tdo." Also--wait, emergency care? Why'd he think that a minute ago?
"Yoor doongud," the slowly resolving blob said, in an unfamiliar voice. "Yuulbee baggon yor feep in notyme."
Wait. That voice was unfamiliar. Female, too smooth. Blob didn't look right either, had the proper number of parts but they weren't right. There was lots of hair, more than he'd ever allow on a med tech. And no full mask. And he didn't see the proper blue-n'-bloodstained working doctor getup either, that was teal. Teal! Who would ever wear teal!
He was just about to launch into a rant when a thought gave his brain a nudge. The eyes. The eyes were wrong. Definitely not on the yellow-orange-red spectrum he should be seeing. Whoever this was, she was not grineer. They had creepy blue eyes and--what were those stripes sitting over them? He'd seen those before. Right? Right. The over-eye stripes.
Corpus did tattoos there. Didn't they. Drew your attention to how ghastly they looked. That was it.
"Ai no, itz ver dizzoryentin," the horrible Corpus interloper said, leaning over to reach for something. Something felt wrong about that too, even though she didn't touch him. "Buttchor wakeng ub fass, an sommun will com into see yu soon."
Oh no. Nonono no no he figured out what'd felt wrong. He'd felt air move on his face when she'd reached by him. He shouldn't feel anything there. That was wrong. Really wrong. That meant his mask was off. And he'd been breathing through his nose, which meant they'd taken out the tubes that fed him air. He didn't need those to breathe outside the mask, but if his mask was gone, he was covered in germs. And if the tubes were gone, then they'd gone reaching inside of him, who knew what they'd done in there, and they'd probably taken his limbs too--
Wait. No. Yes? No. When he looked down (Whoof, more spinning head), he saw hands. They were in the right spot to be his. But they weren't. They were flesh hands. He didn't have those! He used to, back in the cloning lab, back when he was one of the bodies hanging in tubes rather than the one making them grow. But his had been cut off, just like everyone else, when the peripheral neuropathy set in.
And now there were hands here, curling into claws as he stared at them in confusion and mounting anger. The skin wasn't even grineer! "Waddav yo dun t my hams?" he demanded, trying to sit up again, cobwebs in his brain dissolving in the acid of rage. "Hoos hansre thees? Wire they om my arms? Where am I?" He was getting louder, voice clearer, maybe, maybe coordinated enough to flail one of those horrible meat hands towards the probably-Corpus and catch the front of her shirt, dragging her closer to him.
Yes. Definitely coordinated enough for that. Hello, ugly. You're gonna have a bad day.
"Think you can just steal my work and get away with it?" She was trying to cut in with some protest or another, but he wasn't gonna let her take anything else, not even words!
"Not gonna happen." He leaned in towards the almost-definitely-Corpus, and had another, horrible realization as he did so. "How dare you take my legs! Do you know how hard I worked on those?"
A couple of other someones were coming into the room. Well, bring them on! He was still mostly sedated and blurry-eyed and noodle-armed and maskless and there was so much meat, but he'd take them anyway! "Maybe I like yours better. Won't know 'til I try! Come 'ere and and give me your legs!"
Two pairs of big flesh hands grabbed his shoulders and pushed him back down, pinning him to the medical chair. That did not go as he'd planned. To be fair to him, though, he hadn't had a plan.
Something bit into his neck, and he swore extravagantly in Grineer. "How dare you, slimy eels! Trying t' steel my worg, my toob men, may shaeplee pards!"
The room was going blury again. "Can haffem! Therr mime. Mime."
And then he was out.
A. Heropa: Out on the street
Ow. Light. Again. And this time it was the sun.
Alright. Take stock of what he vaguely remembered. "Woke up. Got sedated. Woke up again, some little stern-faced twit lecturing me 'bout Earth, of all things." He was feeling better now, though, if he was talking to himself.
But now he was somewhere. "Warm. Still don't have a mask on, definitely covered in germs now. Probably gonna get sick. Ugh." Whowever'd taken him apart had known how to work on grineer bodies, why'd they know so little about the grineer immune system? Jerks.
"Sky--there's a sky, important to note that--sky is blue. Breathable. Only a few places where this could be." In the grander scheme of things, at least. "Mars would be too much to hope for. The gravity didn't feel right either. Venus? No. Not cold enough, not enough black rocks and robot fish."
Was this Earth? Really? Where were all the trees? Wait--why were there all these blocky buildings? And humans! why were they so tall?
Oh. Right. Thieves had stolen his legs, that was why.
Nothing felt right, actually. He stopped walking--where'd he been going?--and yanked up one of the cloth sleeves hiding his horrid new arms. He should be able to find the graft point, maybe it was just plugged into his somatics somehow, some sort of fake flesh arms--
No. There was no dividing line of a fresh graft, no skin from his own stumps to be seen on either arm. The alien skin went all the way up as far as he could see it, all his ports and plugs smoothed away to nothing. Couldn't even feel their attachment points against the muscle when he squeezed. "What kind of sick mind would do this? Alad? If this is Alad's work--gonna tear the little twitchies off that jellyfish, he's floated free for too long."
His tone was careening from distracted to curious to snarling rage, sending humans into wide arcs around him to avoid him. He tugged his sleeve back down with a sigh of frustration--then he saw a glow on his wrist. "What?"
Up went the sleeve again. There was a glowing tattoo on his wrist. That wasn't Corpus script, though. And it said one word, in big, bold letters: REGISTERED.
"Really." He sneered down at it contemptuously. "So. Part of some flesh-loving freak's collection, then. Got any more of these hiding on me?"
Couldn't see his shoulders very well, the straps of his backpack--wait, he was wearing a backpack?--got in the way. Legs were still too awful a proposition to think about. Instead he lifted up his shirt.
He should've known something was wrong already. His hips were an utter disaster, too thin and lacking the bombshell curves he'd engineered for himself. But his waist, too! They'd completely redone everything, made him blocky as the lowest trooper in a ditch somewhere, all wrapped up in that same skin.
This is intolerable!
"You!" He rounds on the closest person. If they're in grabbing range, they're absolutely grabbed. Hello. A rather muscular man with nerd-pale skin is now demanding your attention.
"What planet is this? Why am I here? Why have I been stuck in this ruinously unfashionable body? Tell me. Quickly."
B. Still Heropa: Testing out a new power
Wait. Backpack? Why'd he have a backpack?
He wrestled it off of himself, twisting his shirt around himself in the process. Ugh! He needed better clothes. A better body. A better universe that really appreciated him properly.
There wasn't much in the bag. A comm unit, a little folded pocket thing with some paper rectangles--fifteen of them, covered in "20"s and "10s" and pictures of human faces, ugh--and a folder of more paper. A slip with an address on it, a glossy little pamphlet that immediately made his eyes glaze over, and--that's a profile on himself. Why's that there? To intimidate him? Flattery? Try harder., sure, it acknowledged his skill with R&D, but--wait. What's this thing about powers?
He squinted at the page, trying to think through the remaining fluffy clouds of sedation. Custom Work. Wait. Was that saying he could--?
Oh thank the Queens, he wasn't stuck in this runty little body. Did that make sense? No. Did it raise many, many questions? Yes. But being short was an abomination that needed to stop. It worked for his darling little Manics, but he needed to feel tall.
Wait. What was that last one? 'Oldest Grineer'? Why would he ever--wait. Wait, did that mean--
Hold off on looking like himself for a minute, this he had to see. Take out the comm unit, record this, document, see the results on the screen--wait. How did these 'powers' work? Like with his augments? Just think about the function he wanted and--
He nearly drops the comm. In the space of a blink, he's taller, much taller, somewhere back up over 2 meters, the comm unit looking small and flimsy in his hand. And on the screen--His face has changed. It's not familiar, but he knows, he knows, he's the Empire's expert on themselves, he knows this is what their faces should look like, genes cleaned up and reset to how they used to be, with limbs that didn't fall apart and organs that didn't betray you, genetics he could take back as a new template--
He'd started to laugh, wild and crazed and triumphant. To someone watching, it might not look like much has happened: He was six feet tall, now he's grown about nine or ten inches. His face has changed, sure, his eyes are almost scarily blue now, but there's nothing immediately obvious that would make someone cackle like that.
C. Any Porter city: Food is complicated
He was slowly starting to become aware of a problem. You know, beyond being stuck on Earth, surrounded by humans, et cetera et cetera. This was something more fundamental even than that, a problem he should've seen coming, but always seemed to forget until it loomed its ugly head again:
He was getting hungry.
No, really, this was a problem. His usual diet? Protein slurry, not from the big batches the rest of everybody had to suffer through, his was higher grade stuff, sanitized and carefully balanced to match his unique needs.
Other grineer could kind of digest forage they found in the field--he certainly had back in the day, and he could tell anyone who'd listen that sand skate was not worth the effort. But now? He'd rearranged and abridged his organs to the point where that wasn't an option anymore. That's just the price of fashion!
And normally? Wasn't a price at all, it was a bonus. With the high-grade stuff he used, he could just send it straight into his digestive system through one of the ports he'd installed. Why bother with eating when you could just plug yourself into some nutrients? Eating was boring!
But now he was calculating, trying to figure out how soon he could mix an acceptable batch. He knew all the components that went into the solution, but could he get his hands on them before he started to starve? And with an all-organic body, he'd need more to--
Wait.
Oh right! He had a working digestive system now! Shove any old human food into his mouth and he'd be fine. Perfect! Now, to find a food or two.
Turned out, that was easier than he'd suspected. It seemed like every other building here was devoted to food. That felt almost sinful. How could you possibly manage to make a setup like that?
And then he ducked into a Moondoes Coffee Shop and found out. "...What?" is all he can manage for a moment.
But only for a moment.
"Lot of trouble for some nutrition. Guess you can't help it, though. Not standardized here. Oh, this is going to be such a pain." He cuts through the line--easy enough when you're two heads taller than everyone else--and bends down to examine the cooler full of all sorts of colored liquids, packets, and whatsits on plates.
"And all of it's human-sized. Tiny people, tiny portions, no concern for proper beings." Not that he looks much different from human right now. Details!
"You--" he straightens up to loom in the direction of whoever's closest. "What's 'coffee'?"
D. Outside Jeopardy 001: Ow.
So. Several hours later, he'd finally read the rest of his profile. They'd assigned him to an address in a region called Jeopardy. What presumption! He wasn't going to do what they told him to!
But he was going to go and check it out anyway.
Going to Jeopardy meant another trip through a Porter and another round of being aggressively dissuaded by tiny humans from taking a closer look at its workings. Hmph! Well, he'd need better tools to really make any headway, regardless. Time to strategize about that. Bash some theories together.
"Gotta work like Orokin portals. Obviously. Don't have many documented for real-to-real gates but it's the same principle 's teleportation. Know that part already, that's the easy part."
He's too engrossed in thinking about it all to remember one very important thing as he approaches Jeopardy #001.
"Gotta have a torsion device stashed away somewhere. Wonder how much they can reprogram them. How much I could."
He forgot that human doorways are tiny, horrible little things. Normally he'd be so tall that he'd remember. But in this new body he was a head shorter. Short enough to make the door look reasonable, but a couple of centimeters too tall to fit.
"But if they've cracked open routes through the Void, shouldn't there be--Hngh!"
Tyl Regor, chief researcher and pioneer in the fight against clone rot syndrome, bestowed his purpose by the Queens themselves, has just smacked his forehead directly into a doorframe.
He's still out on the street. People might've seen.
This is literally the worst thing that has ever happened, to anyone, ever.
WHERE: Heropa, various Porter cities
WHEN: Immediately after Tyl's port-in
WHAT: Tyl tries to attack Porter base staff, gets sedated, then muddles his way through having a human body, his new powers, eating a food, and low doorways.
WARNINGS: None yet. Probable spoilers for Natah, once he gets talking to people.
[ooc: Tyl is a verbose lunatic, so for those coming in on a direct link to this page, I've provided some in-page navigation links here so y'all can jump around to find your fancy:
A. Heropa: Out on the street
B. Still Heropa: Testing out a new power
C. Any Porter city: Food is complicated
D. Outside Jeopardy 001: Ow.]
Introduction: Alien abduction!!
Ow. Owowow ow ow. Light. Light outside his eyelids was making a very spirited attempt to get in. No. Go away. He had a hangover. He had the worst hangover. The kind where you couldn't remember the party, but you had the vague suspicion that it hadn't been fun.
A shadow passed between him and the light, and dared to open his eyes just a little. He saw a fuzzy blob.
Well, that was helpful. It mumbled at him, and he gave it a suspicious squint.
"Ooeryoo," he demanded, and then frowned in annoyance. That hadn't come out right. Had it? Hadn't. Was he still drunk? High on something he'd made in the lab?
"Jusgenyoo chektofer," the blurr said, and that sounded wrong too. Ears weren't 'earing right, along with everything else. He felt far too tired to function.
Sedated. He was definitely sedated. More than usual. Couldn't entirely blame them, not after the last time he'd needed emergency care.
No, wait, he could blame them, because he was in charge, and he didn't want to be sedated right now.
"mdun," he said, trying to pick himself up, but that failed with a wave of dizziness as soon as he tried to lift his head. Whoof. Wasn't gonna stop him arguing the point, though. "Gemeeup, god wurg tdo." Also--wait, emergency care? Why'd he think that a minute ago?
"Yoor doongud," the slowly resolving blob said, in an unfamiliar voice. "Yuulbee baggon yor feep in notyme."
Wait. That voice was unfamiliar. Female, too smooth. Blob didn't look right either, had the proper number of parts but they weren't right. There was lots of hair, more than he'd ever allow on a med tech. And no full mask. And he didn't see the proper blue-n'-bloodstained working doctor getup either, that was teal. Teal! Who would ever wear teal!
He was just about to launch into a rant when a thought gave his brain a nudge. The eyes. The eyes were wrong. Definitely not on the yellow-orange-red spectrum he should be seeing. Whoever this was, she was not grineer. They had creepy blue eyes and--what were those stripes sitting over them? He'd seen those before. Right? Right. The over-eye stripes.
Corpus did tattoos there. Didn't they. Drew your attention to how ghastly they looked. That was it.
"Ai no, itz ver dizzoryentin," the horrible Corpus interloper said, leaning over to reach for something. Something felt wrong about that too, even though she didn't touch him. "Buttchor wakeng ub fass, an sommun will com into see yu soon."
Oh no. Nonono no no he figured out what'd felt wrong. He'd felt air move on his face when she'd reached by him. He shouldn't feel anything there. That was wrong. Really wrong. That meant his mask was off. And he'd been breathing through his nose, which meant they'd taken out the tubes that fed him air. He didn't need those to breathe outside the mask, but if his mask was gone, he was covered in germs. And if the tubes were gone, then they'd gone reaching inside of him, who knew what they'd done in there, and they'd probably taken his limbs too--
Wait. No. Yes? No. When he looked down (Whoof, more spinning head), he saw hands. They were in the right spot to be his. But they weren't. They were flesh hands. He didn't have those! He used to, back in the cloning lab, back when he was one of the bodies hanging in tubes rather than the one making them grow. But his had been cut off, just like everyone else, when the peripheral neuropathy set in.
And now there were hands here, curling into claws as he stared at them in confusion and mounting anger. The skin wasn't even grineer! "Waddav yo dun t my hams?" he demanded, trying to sit up again, cobwebs in his brain dissolving in the acid of rage. "Hoos hansre thees? Wire they om my arms? Where am I?" He was getting louder, voice clearer, maybe, maybe coordinated enough to flail one of those horrible meat hands towards the probably-Corpus and catch the front of her shirt, dragging her closer to him.
Yes. Definitely coordinated enough for that. Hello, ugly. You're gonna have a bad day.
"Think you can just steal my work and get away with it?" She was trying to cut in with some protest or another, but he wasn't gonna let her take anything else, not even words!
"Not gonna happen." He leaned in towards the almost-definitely-Corpus, and had another, horrible realization as he did so. "How dare you take my legs! Do you know how hard I worked on those?"
A couple of other someones were coming into the room. Well, bring them on! He was still mostly sedated and blurry-eyed and noodle-armed and maskless and there was so much meat, but he'd take them anyway! "Maybe I like yours better. Won't know 'til I try! Come 'ere and and give me your legs!"
Two pairs of big flesh hands grabbed his shoulders and pushed him back down, pinning him to the medical chair. That did not go as he'd planned. To be fair to him, though, he hadn't had a plan.
Something bit into his neck, and he swore extravagantly in Grineer. "How dare you, slimy eels! Trying t' steel my worg, my toob men, may shaeplee pards!"
The room was going blury again. "Can haffem! Therr mime. Mime."
And then he was out.
A. Heropa: Out on the street
Ow. Light. Again. And this time it was the sun.
Alright. Take stock of what he vaguely remembered. "Woke up. Got sedated. Woke up again, some little stern-faced twit lecturing me 'bout Earth, of all things." He was feeling better now, though, if he was talking to himself.
But now he was somewhere. "Warm. Still don't have a mask on, definitely covered in germs now. Probably gonna get sick. Ugh." Whowever'd taken him apart had known how to work on grineer bodies, why'd they know so little about the grineer immune system? Jerks.
"Sky--there's a sky, important to note that--sky is blue. Breathable. Only a few places where this could be." In the grander scheme of things, at least. "Mars would be too much to hope for. The gravity didn't feel right either. Venus? No. Not cold enough, not enough black rocks and robot fish."
Was this Earth? Really? Where were all the trees? Wait--why were there all these blocky buildings? And humans! why were they so tall?
Oh. Right. Thieves had stolen his legs, that was why.
Nothing felt right, actually. He stopped walking--where'd he been going?--and yanked up one of the cloth sleeves hiding his horrid new arms. He should be able to find the graft point, maybe it was just plugged into his somatics somehow, some sort of fake flesh arms--
No. There was no dividing line of a fresh graft, no skin from his own stumps to be seen on either arm. The alien skin went all the way up as far as he could see it, all his ports and plugs smoothed away to nothing. Couldn't even feel their attachment points against the muscle when he squeezed. "What kind of sick mind would do this? Alad? If this is Alad's work--gonna tear the little twitchies off that jellyfish, he's floated free for too long."
His tone was careening from distracted to curious to snarling rage, sending humans into wide arcs around him to avoid him. He tugged his sleeve back down with a sigh of frustration--then he saw a glow on his wrist. "What?"
Up went the sleeve again. There was a glowing tattoo on his wrist. That wasn't Corpus script, though. And it said one word, in big, bold letters: REGISTERED.
"Really." He sneered down at it contemptuously. "So. Part of some flesh-loving freak's collection, then. Got any more of these hiding on me?"
Couldn't see his shoulders very well, the straps of his backpack--wait, he was wearing a backpack?--got in the way. Legs were still too awful a proposition to think about. Instead he lifted up his shirt.
He should've known something was wrong already. His hips were an utter disaster, too thin and lacking the bombshell curves he'd engineered for himself. But his waist, too! They'd completely redone everything, made him blocky as the lowest trooper in a ditch somewhere, all wrapped up in that same skin.
This is intolerable!
"You!" He rounds on the closest person. If they're in grabbing range, they're absolutely grabbed. Hello. A rather muscular man with nerd-pale skin is now demanding your attention.
"What planet is this? Why am I here? Why have I been stuck in this ruinously unfashionable body? Tell me. Quickly."
B. Still Heropa: Testing out a new power
Wait. Backpack? Why'd he have a backpack?
He wrestled it off of himself, twisting his shirt around himself in the process. Ugh! He needed better clothes. A better body. A better universe that really appreciated him properly.
There wasn't much in the bag. A comm unit, a little folded pocket thing with some paper rectangles--fifteen of them, covered in "20"s and "10s" and pictures of human faces, ugh--and a folder of more paper. A slip with an address on it, a glossy little pamphlet that immediately made his eyes glaze over, and--that's a profile on himself. Why's that there? To intimidate him? Flattery? Try harder., sure, it acknowledged his skill with R&D, but--wait. What's this thing about powers?
He squinted at the page, trying to think through the remaining fluffy clouds of sedation. Custom Work. Wait. Was that saying he could--?
Oh thank the Queens, he wasn't stuck in this runty little body. Did that make sense? No. Did it raise many, many questions? Yes. But being short was an abomination that needed to stop. It worked for his darling little Manics, but he needed to feel tall.
Wait. What was that last one? 'Oldest Grineer'? Why would he ever--wait. Wait, did that mean--
Hold off on looking like himself for a minute, this he had to see. Take out the comm unit, record this, document, see the results on the screen--wait. How did these 'powers' work? Like with his augments? Just think about the function he wanted and--
He nearly drops the comm. In the space of a blink, he's taller, much taller, somewhere back up over 2 meters, the comm unit looking small and flimsy in his hand. And on the screen--His face has changed. It's not familiar, but he knows, he knows, he's the Empire's expert on themselves, he knows this is what their faces should look like, genes cleaned up and reset to how they used to be, with limbs that didn't fall apart and organs that didn't betray you, genetics he could take back as a new template--
He'd started to laugh, wild and crazed and triumphant. To someone watching, it might not look like much has happened: He was six feet tall, now he's grown about nine or ten inches. His face has changed, sure, his eyes are almost scarily blue now, but there's nothing immediately obvious that would make someone cackle like that.
C. Any Porter city: Food is complicated
He was slowly starting to become aware of a problem. You know, beyond being stuck on Earth, surrounded by humans, et cetera et cetera. This was something more fundamental even than that, a problem he should've seen coming, but always seemed to forget until it loomed its ugly head again:
He was getting hungry.
No, really, this was a problem. His usual diet? Protein slurry, not from the big batches the rest of everybody had to suffer through, his was higher grade stuff, sanitized and carefully balanced to match his unique needs.
Other grineer could kind of digest forage they found in the field--he certainly had back in the day, and he could tell anyone who'd listen that sand skate was not worth the effort. But now? He'd rearranged and abridged his organs to the point where that wasn't an option anymore. That's just the price of fashion!
And normally? Wasn't a price at all, it was a bonus. With the high-grade stuff he used, he could just send it straight into his digestive system through one of the ports he'd installed. Why bother with eating when you could just plug yourself into some nutrients? Eating was boring!
But now he was calculating, trying to figure out how soon he could mix an acceptable batch. He knew all the components that went into the solution, but could he get his hands on them before he started to starve? And with an all-organic body, he'd need more to--
Wait.
Oh right! He had a working digestive system now! Shove any old human food into his mouth and he'd be fine. Perfect! Now, to find a food or two.
Turned out, that was easier than he'd suspected. It seemed like every other building here was devoted to food. That felt almost sinful. How could you possibly manage to make a setup like that?
And then he ducked into a Moondoes Coffee Shop and found out. "...What?" is all he can manage for a moment.
But only for a moment.
"Lot of trouble for some nutrition. Guess you can't help it, though. Not standardized here. Oh, this is going to be such a pain." He cuts through the line--easy enough when you're two heads taller than everyone else--and bends down to examine the cooler full of all sorts of colored liquids, packets, and whatsits on plates.
"And all of it's human-sized. Tiny people, tiny portions, no concern for proper beings." Not that he looks much different from human right now. Details!
"You--" he straightens up to loom in the direction of whoever's closest. "What's 'coffee'?"
D. Outside Jeopardy 001: Ow.
So. Several hours later, he'd finally read the rest of his profile. They'd assigned him to an address in a region called Jeopardy. What presumption! He wasn't going to do what they told him to!
But he was going to go and check it out anyway.
Going to Jeopardy meant another trip through a Porter and another round of being aggressively dissuaded by tiny humans from taking a closer look at its workings. Hmph! Well, he'd need better tools to really make any headway, regardless. Time to strategize about that. Bash some theories together.
"Gotta work like Orokin portals. Obviously. Don't have many documented for real-to-real gates but it's the same principle 's teleportation. Know that part already, that's the easy part."
He's too engrossed in thinking about it all to remember one very important thing as he approaches Jeopardy #001.
"Gotta have a torsion device stashed away somewhere. Wonder how much they can reprogram them. How much I could."
He forgot that human doorways are tiny, horrible little things. Normally he'd be so tall that he'd remember. But in this new body he was a head shorter. Short enough to make the door look reasonable, but a couple of centimeters too tall to fit.
"But if they've cracked open routes through the Void, shouldn't there be--Hngh!"
Tyl Regor, chief researcher and pioneer in the fight against clone rot syndrome, bestowed his purpose by the Queens themselves, has just smacked his forehead directly into a doorframe.
He's still out on the street. People might've seen.
This is literally the worst thing that has ever happened, to anyone, ever.
D
He leaps from his bad and hurries to the window overlooking the street, and watches with shameless curiosity as a man (or something quite close to it) approaches their door. His door. And immediately rebounds off it.
Rupert barks with laughter, unlatching his bedroom window to hang out of it and address the newcomer with an easy, cheerful grin.
"Tricky things, doors. Would you like to try again?"
no subject
More importantly, he was being mocked, and that was not allowed.
"Dunno, not sure I can handle it," he replied, all fake breeziness. He was gonna--wait, wait, had an idea. He could still turn himself normal, right? Right. The profile said so.
"Just can't figure it out, why they'd build it all so minuscule." He was looking at what little he could see of the room behind the human now, getting a fix on where things were. Whether the ceiling was tall enough, or if he'd have to duck.
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He settles down, crossing his arms over the window sill, and beams smugly down at the Tyl by the door. Perhaps he should record this. It might even go viral, as they say nowadays.
"Go on, have another try. I'm sure you'll get the hang of it in no time."
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"Or better 'n that..." Right. Normal body. Normal body. Come on--Ha! Normal body! All 230 cm of perfectly engineered beauty.
"Better 'n that, I do this." From his perspective, the world distorted and curved impossibly, too quickly to make much sense off, and then he was looming behind the human, his sudden appearance paired with a strange hissing noise of suddenly displaced air.
"I think I've got the hang of it."
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"Absolutely not," He retorts, before throwing out a hand in the direction of the floor beneath the newcomer's feet and yanking on thin air. Reality tears itself a neat hole with an ugly, ripping noise as Rupert's portal erupts beneath his housemate's feet, neatly depositing him back on the sidewalk once more. Rupert turns, literally hanging out of the window by one arm, and wags a scolding finger at the man - creature? - on the pavement below.
"Oh, no, no, no - I'm afraid that's not allowed," He reprimands with a grin. "We knock before entering people's rooms."
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Forget that. Forget being happy. He's just been tipped back through the torn fabric of space and out onto the street, and how dare someone think they've gotten the better of him!
"Oh, I am so sorry!" He waves a hand dismissively, then clenches it into a fist with a clatter of metal fingers as he centers himself for a jump. "Let's see if I've got it right this time!"
And with that, he launches himself towards the window. "Knock knock!"
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"Don't you da--"
The threat is cut off as Rupert tumbles back into the room, landing with a crash and a grunt of pain against the carpet. Dazed and disoriented, he gives himself a moment to try and catch his breath - a difficult thing, given how thoroughly the air has been knocked out of him - before throwing his new housemate a pained, dirty look.
"God, you're rude," He complains hoarsely, struggling up to his elbows. "Hold on a moment - I'll send you to fucking Timbuktu, just - just stay there... while I catch my breath..."
Or maybe not. He lies back down again, disgruntled and wheezing, and presses a hand against his chest. Maybe his body has quite recovered from the whole car crash thing after all.
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"Oh, don't get up," he purrs, stalking over to the exit. "I'll see myself out." He gave the door a mocking little knock before ducking low to make it under the frame, feet tik-tik-tiking away across the floor as he wanders off to survey the house.
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Rupert doesn't consider himself a small man, but staring up at his opponent with an expression of injured outrage he realises that he should probably be more intimidated than he actually is. Still, with bloody-minded determination he holds up a hand, ready to peel back reality in a fresh portal as he threatens:
"Take another step and I will send you somewhere unpleasant, mark my words." Rupert's words are gasping and winded - he's still not quite sure his body has remembered how to breathe, but he struggles gamely on. "Who the fuck are you?"
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He takes a step back--then a step forward, to examine the portal before it disappears. Interesting! Space was all sorts of bendable here. So, he could expect a high probability of Void fissures roving around, chewing up reality. Not his specialty, not his science, but if he set his mind to it? Maybe he could make it useful.
And that threat there? That operated on two principles which didn't apply: One, that he'd be intimidated by it. Two? That he didn't want to talk about himself.
Of course he wanted to talk about himself. "Tyl Regor. Chief Researcher, cloner, augment designer, fleet commander, elevated by the Twin Queens themselves."
He gestured to the space around them. "And assigned to this house, apparently! Not sure I like it, but it'll do for now."
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Well, that certainly answers the question of why this person was trying to get into his house - new housemates came and went with alarming regularity but it didn't hurt to be sure. Rupert nods faintly to himself despite the fact that very few of those words made any kind of sense, and gives the man (big question mark there) a coolly scrutinising look from the top of his head to the very tips of his... toes?
"Next question: what the fuck are you?"
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No, he doesn't expect the little thing feels all that lucky, but not everybody can be blessed with good taste.
"So. How many of you are there? Got any more humans lurking around here somewhere?"
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"The best I'm ever going to meet, really," He repeats in a suspicious, narrow-eyed drawl. An alien, apparently. Rupert's experience with nonhumans currently lies at zero; even the ones from space had been human-shaped. After a moment of further inspection, Rupert takes a step back with a shrug, relenting enough to let the grineer continue his exploration.
"There are a few of us here. Three others, maybe." He waves a dismissive hand. "They all come and go so frequently, I lose track. Such is life in this modern world. Some of us aren't kept here for very long before they send us back."
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"Mmm. Most of us aren't as tolerant as I am." If Ruk were here, the human would probably be a smudge on the floor by now, behaving like that. The man had never met a problem he couldn't set on fire.
"How long? Sent back home?" That seemed to be the implication. "Well then. Better get to work!" His pace sped up as he kept roaming the house, though he was still having to duck every few meters to get through the--you know what, he was just going to turn human, no matter how much he hated it. "This architecture is dire, by the way. How do you stand being around this many angles?" He gives a doorframe a judging look as he walks under it.
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Oh. That form is much easier on the eye, Rupert decides appreciatively. And easier to drop a portal beneath, if things should come back to that. He rubs idly at his chest as he regains the last of his winded breath and hangs back just enough to examine the human form's backside.
"Architecture, yes. Dreadfully difficult," He agrees indifferently.
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"Inconsiderate. I need time, need tools, need to--"
He glances back over his shoulder, fast enough to catch that look. He knows that look. Normally, he appreciates that look. "Like it?" Really? It had some muscle, but ugh, the waistline, the face! "It's yours if you want it. You can keep it." It's horrid, but he's at least recovered from the shock of it all, if he's sounding flirty about it.
"It's small, weak, barely any curves at all. I'm not happy with it."
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Not that this new housemate seems to be the type to care for being popular, if Rupert being kicked through his own window is any measure things. But Rupert's already over it, smoothly sailing past his initial annoyance and regarding him with open curiosity.
"What do you need tools for?"
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"The skin's alright. That's all." Smooth. No discoloration or signs of disease. Good skin was important, but. "The rest of it's dire. And the clothes make it worse," He picked at the shirt he'd woken up in, something drab and unfitted and, he suspected, made entirely out of cloth. "Gotta fix that too."
"This--" He glanced up to make sure he wasn't under any doorways before changing into his Old Grineer body, and instantly he felt better about the world. "This has so much inside it, and I need it all." His nearly-unnatural blue eyes had taken on an extra hint of mania.
"The whole Empire wants this, every gene-dabbler would kill for this, and now it's mine."
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"Yes, yes, and the tools are for...?" Rupert repeats, tailing off expectantly. Because all this talk of bodies hasn't really answered his question (unless it has, which is horrifying).
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...He'd already explained, hadn't he? The mania fades a bit as condescension takes the wheel. "I said inside, didn't I? Hard to take a look in there without at least a scalpel."
He brought a hand to his chest, still reveling a little in the feeling of real nerves reacting to the touch on both sides. "Self-surgery's not easy, but I'm not gonna miss a second of it."
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"Oh dear me," Rupert replies brightly, tucking his hands in the small of his back as he tilts his head in amused pity. "You are quite mad, aren't you."